My cool little class...

Today was a quiet day. I showed up to class this morning and found out that our teacher was sick and we were on our own. So we had time to work on some assignments and then we did our practice teaching. So by 1 we were done and having lunch and then had nothing else planned for the afternoon.... a miracle! After lunch we made a valiant effort at being responsible students and getting some work done on our own.... I would say that lasted for, oh, about 15 minutes. That's when Megan suggested going to this cute little outdoor cafe that serves killer gelato. The original idea was to go there, have our gelato and then just chill and do our work there at an outside table. Yeah, that clearly was a faulty plan from the very beginning and destined to fail.

But we DID finally get back to the academy to use some of our time wisely in planning our lessons for tomorrow (and some of it for IMing, but we won't mention that part). Tomorrow we start in with the final teaching stage, the hour-long lessons (up to this point, they've only been 40 minutes). This is our cute little class of beginners that I'll be teaching tomorrow and I love them! The guy in the white shirt is Jorge, the one who had us all over to his house on Saturday night. The others are Paula, Elisabet y Ivan.

I plan to go out with the ladies one night for dinner. There is an odd and very fine line here between teachers and students. It seems in the States that there is a very definitive line that doesn't get crossed. Teachers on one side and students very firmly on the other. But it isn't like that here. Within the first couple of days we were all hanging out with Margaret (our TEFL instructor) and she regularly spends time out of class with her Chilean students. I have to think that it has something to do with the fact that in a culture where you greet each and every student with a beso (kiss) at both the beginning and ending of class, how could you possibly maintain that line? You can hardly remain distant from people you're kissing twice a day! But I do have to say that, interestingly enough, despite their obvious friendships outside of the class where the teacher is just one of the gang, there somehow remains a very definitive respect of the teacher role while in the classroom. It's a very interesting balance to observe. But one I'm anxious to adapt as I'm all about the relationships and could never see myself in that stern "I am the teacher, you are the student" role. Another reason I think I'm well-suited to South America!